


Midnight on Geldstraat

by Sarai



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-23 05:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23039545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarai/pseuds/Sarai
Summary: Jesper wakes up from a nightmare that feels all too real and wants nothing more than to be left alone with his misery.Wylan has other plans.
Relationships: Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck
Comments: 11
Kudos: 142





	Midnight on Geldstraat

**Author's Note:**

> TW: contains references to vomiting and something like a panic attack. It's not super graphic, but I know just the idea bothers some people, so please be forewarned!
> 
> Note: the nursery rhymes referenced are, respectively, Dutch and Irish.

It wasn’t the first time.  
  
It wasn’t the first time he had the dream.  
  
It wasn’t the first time he woke up from it, shivering in the dark, his stomach roiling in fear.  
  
It wasn’t the first time he bolted for the washroom, locked the door, and vomited last night’s dinner.

It wasn’t the first time he lay there, leaned against the wall and shivered and tried to think a single coherent thought but had too many partial thoughts tripping over each other in his head. Tadpoles. Cheetah-speed tadpoles and he couldn’t catch a single one. Jesper focused on the crushing feeling of his chest, the heaving weight of each rise and fall. He focused on the cool tiles under his legs. On the thrum of blood like his entire body was a bruise.  
  
_The gleam of gold in the Church of Barter—  
  
The matter-of-fact, the predatory gleam in the Shu soldier’s eyes—Saints, the single-minded focus of his expression—_  
  
Jesper opened his eyes and for a few awful heartbeats he was in the Church again and the kherguud soldier was reaching for him, and when he came back to himself, Jesper had hurled himself back against the wall. His breathing came heavier.  
  
He wanted… not this. He wanted not to hurt. He wanted not to feel this way ever again, he wanted the feelings to stop _now_ , he wanted the room to go still, he… he…  
  
Jesper tried to swallow, failed, hacked up a mess of it. His mouth still tasted of sick.  
  
He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall. Jesper was vaguely aware that his skin felt cold, but it didn’t… matter. He felt it as a fact, not a feeling, as something happening to the object of his body from which his mind had come unstuck. The essence of what was Jesper Fahey floated, formless and senseless. The physical part of him remained on the washroom floor, taking slow breaths and occasionally giving a perfunctory shiver.  
  
He was going to go back to the bedroom. He really was. Just… soon. Soon. But for now he would just sit here, tracing his fingers along the edge of the tile, waiting waiting waiting for the feeling to ebb out of him.  
  
“Jesper?”  
  
Jesper looked up so sharply he cracked his head against the wall. Something else entirely made him dizzy. The world swam—blurred—focused.  
  
He swallowed. Successfully this time.  
  
“Go back to bed, Wylan!”  
  
“Can I come in?” Wylan called from the other side of the washroom door.  
  
No.  
  
Vaguely, Jesper registered that at least he had remembered to lock it this time. He just… his head… wobbled. Or the world wobbled around it, he wasn’t sure.  
  
“I’m almost finished, I’ll be out soon!” Too many words. Saints, he was going to be sick again.  
  
“Jes?”  
  
“I…”  
  
He smacked the stupid tiles. Hard. Wylan… didn’t… _get it_. There was something feral inside Jesper, something coiled to strike, something that could not be close to Wylan. This was to _keep him safe_ and he didn’t _understand_ and—  
  
After a few moments, the door swung open.  
  
“Oh, Jesper…”  
  
Couldn’t he _listen?!_  
  
Wylan knelt in front of Jesper. His mind jumped between seeing and not seeing, hearing and not hearing, and it was almost easier when Wylan stopped asking questions because the sound was coming through water. And Jesper hated deep water.  
  
Wylan stopped asking, instead placing a gentle hand on his back and pushing him forward, then wrapping a soft blanket around Jesper. Wylan rubbed his shoulders.  
  
“Breathe. Try to breathe. Jesper? Can you stand up?”  
  
No, he could most definitely not stand up. Jesper shook his head. He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall again. He was starting to very much like this wall. It was so supportive.  
  
“That’s okay. It’s okay.”  
  
Jesper was vaguely aware of goings-on around him. Not very. He felt himself moving, the brush of the blanket being spread around him, gentle pressures, murmurs that were sounds but he couldn’t make them sound like sounds in his head, not through all the water.  
  
He closed his eyes, sank down into his tadpole thoughts.  
  
The Church of Barter.  
  
The way it felt to hit the floor.  
  
The realization that he was going to d—  
  
Jesper lurched forward and retched up thin bile.  
  
Wylan rubbed his back and made shushing noises. Or… maybe those were words, Jesper honestly couldn’t tell. The tone was nice. Wylan was not as solid as the wall, but his squishiness was an acceptable substitute to settle against.  
  
“Breathe, Jesper.”  
  
Unappealing.  
  
“Breathe.”  
  
When his mind came together, Jesper ached all over. His mouth tasted like old sick. His throat was raw. His muscles, though—his muscles just felt worn out. He didn’t understand why. He was curled up, leaning against Wylan, Wylan’s arms around him. They were on the washroom floor, propped up against the wall. Jesper had an excellent view of the bottom of Wylan’s nightshirt, one leg, the stupid frumpy socks he wore to bed. Another time, he would have to joke about being between Wylan’s legs. But right now Jesper was too thoroughly wrung for that.  
  
“Did you… pick the lock?”  
  
“I was worried about you,” Wylan non-answered. He shifted, bringing a hand to rest on Jesper’s head.  
  
He could hear Wylan’s heart beating.  
  
When had Wylan Van Eck, merchling extraordinaire and occasional demo expert, learned to pick locks?  
  
“I fought a Shu soldier in the Church of Barter.”  
  
Wylan gasped sharply. Yeah. That was about why Jesper hadn’t mentioned it before. That, and…  
  
“I tried to run away. I was scared.” Saints, he never would have admitted that to Kaz. Maybe, _maybe_ to Inej, but he didn’t want them to see him this way. He didn’t want to _be_ this way. Jesper shivered. “I didn’t w—I could have ruined the job, I knew that, but, Saints, I didn’t want to die.”  
  
He was a coward. Jesper knew he was a coward. He had known it keenly on the Ferolind, when he didn’t offer to take parem to fix Nina. He could have helped her, but he didn’t. He was selfish and scared and he didn’t help his friend… not that he and Nina were especially close.  
  
Because Jesper was scared. Because he had been afraid of Nina learning what he was.  
  
Softly, Wylan said, “I’m glad you lived.”  
  
Those four small words, or something inside them, split to the core of him. Jesper shivered. Swallowed. Wept onto Wylan’s nightshirt while Wylan rubbed little circles on Jesper’s back. His head felt momentarily too cold and too light, but he appreciated the circles.  
  
“This isn’t me.”  
  
This was not Jesper Fahey crying on the washroom floor of a mercher’s mansion.  
  
“It’s okay for this to be part of you,” Wylan said, which it was not. “I would have run, too.”  
  
No, he wouldn’t. Jesper had seen Wylan do a lot of pouting and sulking, but he hadn’t seen him run.  
  
“You would have died,” Jesper said, thinking about the time Wylan faced kherguud soldiers with him in the Ice Court. He shivered.  
  
“Well… you probably would have been sad,” Wylan reasoned, “so you can understand why I’m glad you’re alive.”  
  
Jesper didn’t like that logic. He couldn’t argue with it, but he didn’t like it.  
  
“Jesper,” Wylan said. “You’re a lot of things. You’re smart. Good. The best shot in Ketterdam. You’re the boy with the brave, beautiful smile. It’s not right, what we’ve had to do. We’re not soldiers.”  
  
“What happened to ‘you’re the best shot in Ketterdam’?” Jesper asked. He was mildly disgruntled at losing that title within two sentences.  
  
Almost nonchalant about it, Wylan said, “You are. Just because you have a talent doesn’t mean you have to use it. Or use it that way.”  
  
He was doing that thing again where he was too direct and earnest, and sliced through the fog inside Jesper that should have justified a firefight. The problem was, if Wylan was right, then there had been something inherently wrong with the past two years of Jesper’s life. It meant what happened in the Church of Barter had been wrong. It meant he had made an awful lot of very bad choices instead of falling into a more real reality.  
  
“Not now, Wylan.”  
  
“What would you prefer?” Wylan asked.  
  
How the hell was he supposed to know?  
  
“Sing something,” Jesper said. He resettled himself against Wylan, then promised, “Then we’ll go to bed. Just sing me something first.”  
  
The Van Eck mansion boasted innumerable physical comforts. The bed was soft, the food was good, sometimes it seemed like every day he found a new ridiculous decorative gold inlay or mahogany sconce to tease Wylan over. In that moment, Jesper valued precisely none of it even half as highly as the merchling cradling him on the washroom floor and singing a lullaby. He hated needing it, being this way, but miserable as the situation was… Wylan was here. Being Jesper, at least in this moment, was okay.  
  
When the last clear note of the song had faded, Jesper said, “That’s a weird song, you know. Telling little kids the moon is looking through the windows while they sleep—you Kerch…”  
  
“Mary Malone, Michael Finnegan, Danny Boy, Dan Tucker, Riley’s Daughter, Pat on the Roadway…”  
  
“Don’t tease me with Kaelish songs.”  
  
“Kaelish songs about people dying,” Wylan retorted.  
  
Jesper considered for a moment. Wylan wasn’t exactly wrong, and quite a lot of Kaelish children’s songs featured a death. Although—“Pat wasn’t dead.”  
  
“No, just hit by a cart that broke his bones.”  
  
“He complained about it. The dead don’t complain.”  
  
Jesper could almost hear Wylan rolling his eyes. When Wylan changed the subject, Jesper counted that as a win. He counted himself as the victor even as Wylan got up, made Jesper drink some water, and coaxed him to his feet. He went along with it, though. Jesper was a lot of things, but he wasn’t sad enough of a skiv to make his boyfriend sleep on the washroom floor. Leaving the room gave him a strange feeling, a lurching like the feeling of climbing up high and looking down, only without the excitement. Leaving the room forced the rest of the night into context.  
  
“Wy—”  
  
“It’s okay.”  
  
How did he _know_?  
  
“I am, though.” Sorry.  
  
“I know.”  
  
_How?_  
  
It wasn’t worth chasing, not when Jesper felt so tired. He didn’t understand why these episodes left him physical exhausted; all he did was lie on the washroom floor! But somehow they took all the energy out of him. He just wanted to get back to their bed. He had never been given an adequate explanation for why it was so high off the ground; normally, just watching Wylan climb aboard cheered him up. Tonight was no exception. They resettled together, arms tangled up around each other, shaking off the cold under heavy covers.  
  
Jesper asked, “Do we have to talk about it?”  
  
“We can. Is that what you want?”  
  
He groaned. In what possible world could that be what he wanted?  
  
“We don’t have to,” Wylan added.  
  
Didn’t they? This wasn’t the first time. Jesper knew it wasn’t, and that, in the larger scale of their life, he was not okay. But right now he was. Right now he had Wylan’s arms around him, his head on Wylan’s chest, and right now, with Wylan, things were okay. Jesper shivered.  
  
“We have to,” he almost whispered. They had to, because he knew what happened if they didn’t, because he could already feel it swirling around inside him. Growing. Waiting. “Make me talk tomorrow. I’m too tired now.”  
  
“Tomorrow, then,” Wylan promised.  
  
Jesper closed his eyes, banishing the gray shadow-shapes he could just make out. For a flash, he saw the kherguud soldier again, just for a heartbeat—the rush of adrenaline to his exhausted chest—  
  
“Tell how much you love me, Wylan.”  
  
“I love you to the moon and back.”


End file.
